The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
BGP is a protocol used for routing in communication networks. In convergence, peer entities learn information about the available routes in a network. As routes are added, removed or changed in a communication network, update messages are sent to peer groups to inform the peer groups about changes in routes. As more routes are added to the network, the convergence time for BGP and the time for advertising all BGP routes to all BGP peers increases.
Present approaches of BGP maintain fairness among peer groups while advertising update messages. Fairness requires a first update message to be advertised to all required peers or peers groups prior to advertising a second update message to peers or peer groups. Maintaining fairness across all peers or peer groups results in a great number of messages having to be advertised during BGP convergence. The great amount of messages that must be generated and advertised results in lengthy convergence times.
Based on the foregoing, it would be desirable to avoid generating and sending the quantity of messages that are currently generated and sent under prior art approaches. By avoiding generating and sending messages in such quantities, convergence time may be increased.